Roland Garros (French Open (Roland Garros)) - Paris, France. Roland Garros (French Open (Roland Garros)) - Paris, France Roland Garros now

And the first fighter pilot.

Adrien Georges Eugene Roland Garros
Adrien Georges Eugine Roland Garros
Roland Garros in 1910
Date of Birth	October 6(1888-10-06 )
Place of Birth	Saint Denis (Reunion)
Date of death	October 5(1918-10-05 ) (29 years)
A place of death	Vouziers, Ardennes, France
Affiliation	French Air Force
Type of army	Aviation
Years of service	-
Battles/wars	World War I
Awards and prizes
Media files at Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes Roland Garros is credited with the title of " first air ace", which involved the destruction of 5 or more enemy aircraft in the air.

Biography

Start of an aviation career

Adrien Georges Eugene Roland Garros was born in Saint-Denis, Reunion. He was fond of playing the piano from childhood and came to Paris at a young age to continue his musical education. He studied at the legal lyceum. However, in Paris, Roland saw an airplane for the first time, after which he was no longer interested in the career of a musician. In 1909, Garros managed to persuade the famous pilot Alberto Santos-Dumont to teach him how to fly. A year later, in July 1910, he received a pilot's license for Breve No. 147, and soon became one of the best aviators in France.

Garros organized an air circus and went on tour with him to Mexico and the United States, where he performed for a year. Then he returned to France and took part in many competitions.

In 1911, Garros participated in the Paris-Madrid and Paris-London-Paris air races, in which he took second place.

In September 1911, he set a world altitude record - 5610 m.

Repeatedly participated in demonstration flights in Europe and in the USA. During one of these aerial demonstrations in Germany, he was caught by the outbreak of World War I. Garros managed to start his plane at night without the help of serving German technicians and successfully fly to France (at that time only a few aviators dared to fly in the dark).

World War I


A propeller with bullet deflectors recovered by the Germans from the wreckage of a Roland Garros airplane.	Machine Gun Synchronizer	Installing a Vickers machine gun firing through a propeller on a Moran airplane	Installation of the Vickers machine gun on SPAD VII.

Thanks to this innovation, on April 1, 1915, Garros shot down a German Albatros reconnaissance aircraft (most likely Albatros B.III) at an altitude of 1000 meters.

On April 8, the French pilot conducted three air battles in a day, sending one enemy into a disorderly fall (but no one, including Garros, observed the fall itself, so the victory was not counted), and forced the other two to dive under the protection of their anti-aircraft machine guns.

On April 14, while on patrol, Garros shot down one of two German Aviatics conducting reconnaissance.

Memory

The tennis complex in Paris, where the French Open tennis championship is held, was named after the pilot. The championship itself is also often called the Roland Garros tournament. The tennis stadium houses the Roland Garros Gallery Museum. The museum is dedicated to the history of tennis, there is an exposition about an aviator who has been fond of tennis since childhood. Garros also played rugby and played for the French club Stade Francais.
In Saint-Raphael, 49 kilometers southwest of Nice, at the place where Garros' plane finished when flying across the Mediterranean, a monument was unveiled in April 1914.
Roland Garros International Airport (on Reunion Island) is named after him.
The place where he landed in Bizerte (Tunisia) is now called "Roland Garros".
Peugeot has developed several models of Roland Garros cars.

One of the world's most important tennis tournaments and one of the Grand Slam tournaments, Roland Garros is incredibly popular both in France and around the world. This trend has led to the fact that the existing venues simply cannot accommodate everyone, so we expect a large-scale modernization of the arena and tennis facilities of the famous French Championship in the near future.

Basic information about the Roland Garros tournament

The first Championship tournament was held quite soon after the emergence of tennis as a sport - in 1891, and provided only for competitions for men in single player. Six years later, women's performances began to be practiced, and in 1925 Roland Garros took on international status.

Almost always, competitions were held in the capital of France, and only once an exception was made - Roland Garros in 1909 was held in Bordeaux.

History of the Championship

The very first tournament had a very prestigious status - only professional tennis players or members of clubs could become its participants. This closeness led to the rapid development international competitions in other countries where they were not so zealous about participating in the National Championship.

As a result, Roland Garros became international only in 1925, but the arena itself was opened only two years later, after the famous victory of the French in the Davis Cup. The tournament got its name after the famous French aviator - military pilot Roland Garros made a flight of more than 700 kilometers without landing across the Mediterranean Sea.

During the Second World War, during the fascist occupation, the arena served as a place for temporary accommodation of Jews before being sent to places of execution and torture. This sad era in history sports facility lasted for about five years.

Upcoming Roland Garros upgrade

In the late 60s of the last century, Roland Garros became one of the Grand Slam tournaments, which led to an incredible increase in its popularity. To accommodate a huge number of people wishing to attend the competition, the following modernization was carried out:

Green areas have been reorganized,
Transition to electronic ticketing
Changes have been made to the markup and pointer system.

It has become much more comfortable to move around the arena, however, the administrators are already concerned about the expansion of the tennis playing area, so literally in 2018, grandiose and significant changes in the size of the courts, as well as other aspects, are expected.

) on the lips of everyone who is not indifferent to tennis, and especially in the second half of May and early June, when Open Championship France - the unofficial world championship on clay courts. This name is given to the tennis stadium in Paris. However, not all tennis fans know the history of this name.

The French Championship at the beginning of the 19th century did not have a permanent residence permit and until 1928 was held on the courts of the capital's clubs "Racing Club de France", "l" île de Puteaux "and" Stade Francais ". In 1925 it was declared "International", after which, began to be considered as an unofficial world championship on clay courts. There were not enough courts at existing tennis bases. FFLT) realized that it was time to build a tennis stadium with big amount courts with stands and began to look for a place for it.

In 1928, the owner of the Stade Francais club ( author's note ‒ Located in the "Park Saint-Cloud" - a suburb of Paris) Emile Lesieur agreed to donate part of his territory (3.25 hectares) for this purpose, but with one condition - the stadium should be named after the famous Frenchman Roland Garros (), with whom he had been on friendly terms since studying at business school "HEC Paris" (1906-1908), and during the First World War they were both pilots. In addition, Garros played for the club's rugby team - the most titled at that time. The condition was accepted. And not only the stadium was named "Roland Garros", but the championship of France (Internationaux de France, French Open) began to be called by the same name.

Who is Roland Garros? I’ll immediately make a reservation that he was not a tennis champion, but, as can be seen from the surviving photo, he held rackets in his hands.

So, Roland Garros was born on October 6, 1888 in Saint-Denis ( author's note ‒ The capital of the foreign department of France, located on the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean). Soon my parents moved to Saigon (since 1975 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam). As a child, he played the piano. Due to the lack of a French high school An 11-year-old teenager is sent to study in France. From this moment until the end of his life, Garros will lead a practically independent life. Studied at Stanislas College in Cannes. He was active in cycling and football. After graduating from college, he moved to Paris. In 1906 he entered the prestigious business school HEC Paris, which now bears his name. It was there that Roland struck up a strong friendship with fellow student Emile Lesier, who fascinated him by playing rugby.

In Paris, Garros first saw an airplane, after which he was no longer interested in a career as a businessman. In 1909, Garros managed to persuade the famous pilot Alberto Santos-Dumont to teach him how to fly. A year later, he received a pilot's license and soon became one of the best aviators in France. So, for example, in the famous Paris-London-Paris air race (1911), he took 2nd place.

In 1912, he set a world flight altitude record - 5.610 m, and the next year he became famous for being the first to make a non-stop flight on September 23 ( author's note ‒ On a Morane-Saulnier aircraft with an engine of 80 Horse power listen)) across the Mediterranean from Fréjus in southern France to Bizerte in Tunisia ( author's note ‒ 730 km) in less than 8 hours.

Repeatedly participated in demonstration flights in Europe and in the USA. During one of these demonstration air performances in Germany, he was caught by the outbreak of the First World War. Garros managed to start his plane at night without the help of serving German technicians and successfully fly to France ( note by author ‒ At that time, only a few aviators dared to fly in the dark).

Upon his return to Paris, Garros voluntarily entered the military service. Performing reconnaissance flights, he wanted to shoot down German aircraft in the air ( note of the author ‒ The pilot was armed with a revolver or a carbine, with which one could only try to injure or kill the enemy pilot). He managed to install a machine gun on the plane, which would shoot between the propeller blades thanks to the firing interrupter. Garros calculated that about 7% of the bullets would still hit the blades. Therefore, he designed special triangular metal shields for the rear of the blades. The shields were set at an angle so that the bullets did not ricochet towards the fuselage.

Thanks to an improved machine gun, Rolan shot down three enemy planes in April 1915, but on April 19 he was shot down from the ground and made an emergency landing on enemy territory (according to another version, due to clogged fuel lines). The result is captivity.

After 3 years, his next attempt to escape was successful. At home, the famous aviator was offered to train young pilots, but he insisted on returning to the front. He won another air battle, but the day before his 30th birthday, Lieutenant Garros died in an air battle ( note of the author ‒ At that time, they already began to fly in pairs and his wingman, who was obliged to cover Garros, lagged behind, and thus did not fulfill his function) near Vouzier in northern France, where it is located. Five weeks after his death, an armistice was signed.

(aut.- In some publications and publications, Ronal Garros is credited with the title of “first air ace”, which meant the destruction of 5 or more enemy aircraft in the air. However, they shot down 4 aircraft. But he can certainly be considered a hero of the First World War and the first fighter pilot.).

In his homeland, Reunion Island, a monument to the air record holder and war hero has been erected, and an international airport has also been named in his honor.

In 1983, the French company Peugeot released the Roland Garros car ( Peugeot Roland Garros) model 205 with modification - "convertible" (CC). The model had a special painting and leather interior.

Further the lineup"Peugeot Roland Garros" was the following: 1989 - "405"; 1993 - "106"; 1994 - "306" and "306 CC"; 1995 - "806"; 1998 - "206" and "206 CC"; 2004 - "307"; 2009 - "207" and "207 CC"; 2012 - special edition for China and Latin America; 2013 - "207 CC" and "308 CC"; 2014 - "208"; 2015 - "108"; 2016 - "208".

On the 100th anniversary of Roland Garros in 1988, on the eve of the tournament, a memorial plaque was opened in the press box of the tennis stadium and a commemorative coin of 10 francs “Roland Garros, 1888-1918” (diameter 26 mm, weight 10 g, nickel brass) was issued.

The second 10 euro coin was issued in 2012 (diameter 29 mm, weight 10 g, 500 silver).

In 1993, the nephew of the legendary pilot, journalist Jean-Pierre Lefebvre Garros, published the biographical story “Roland Garros”.

Roland Garros is dedicated to a number of postage stamps: Monaco, 1963. (1 stamp) and 2003. (1 stamp); North Korea 1987 (1 stamp); France 1988 (1 stamp), and 2013. (1 stamp); Comoros, 1988 (1 stamp); Wallis and Futuna, 2013 (1 stamp); CAR 2013 (5 stamps), Niger (2 stamps).

The most colorful and meaningful is a series of 5 stamps of the Central African Republic in 2013 on souvenir sheets, presented below.

Not far from the famous tennis stadium is the Roland Garros Museum, opened in 2003. The exhibits of the collections consist both of things personally belonging to the eminent pioneer of French aviation, and relate to the history of tennis, the stadium and the tournament. There is a bilingual multimedia library that includes posters, books, magazines, a variety of documents, statistics and other information.

, Saint-Denis (Reunion) - October 5, Vouzier) - French pilot, athlete, hero of the First World War and the first fighter pilot.

Sometimes Roland Garro is credited with the title of "first air ace", which meant the destruction of 5 or more enemy aircraft in the air.

Biography

Start of an aviation career

Adrien Georges Eugene Roland Garraud was born in Saint-Denis, Reunion. He was fond of playing the piano from childhood and came to Paris at a young age to continue his musical education. He studied at the legal lyceum. However, in Paris, Roland saw an airplane for the first time, after which he was no longer interested in the career of a musician. In 1909, Garro managed to persuade the famous pilot Alberto Santos-Dumont to teach him how to fly. A year later, in July 1910, he received a pilot's license for Breve No. 147, and soon became one of the best aviators in France.

Garros organized an air circus and went on tour with him to Mexico and the United States, where he performed for a year. Then he returned to France and took part in many competitions.

In 1911, Garro participated in the Paris-Madrid and Paris-London-Paris air races, in which he took second place.

In September 1911, he set a world altitude record - 5610 m.

Repeatedly participated in demonstration flights in Europe and in the USA. During one of these aerial demonstrations in Germany, he was caught by the outbreak of World War I. Garro managed to start his plane at night without the help of serving German technicians and successfully fly to France (at that time only a few aviators dared to fly in the dark).

World War I

Thanks to this innovation, on April 1, 1915, Garro shot down a German reconnaissance aircraft Albatros (most likely Albatros B.III) at an altitude of 1000 meters.

On April 8, the French pilot conducted three air battles in a day, sending one enemy into a disorderly fall (but no one, including Garro, observed the fall itself, so the victory was not counted), and forced the other two to dive under the protection of their anti-aircraft machine guns.

On April 14, while on patrol, Garro shot down one of two German Aviatics conducting reconnaissance.

Memory

The tennis complex in Paris, where the French Open tennis championship is held, was named after the pilot. The championship itself is also often called the Roland Garro tournament. The tennis stadium houses the Roland Garro Gallery museum. The museum is dedicated to the history of tennis, there is an exposition about an aviator who has been fond of tennis since childhood. Garro also played rugby and played for the French club Stade Francais.
In Saint-Raphael, 49 kilometers southwest of Nice, at the place where Garro's plane finished when flying across the Mediterranean Sea, a monument was unveiled in April 1914.
Roland Garro International Airport (on Reunion Island) is named after him.
The place where he landed in Bizerte (Tunisia) is now called "Roland Garro".
Peugeot has developed several models of Roland Garro cars.

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Literature

. - ABC-CLIO, 2005. - ISBN 9781851094202.(English)

Galperin, Yu. M.. - M .: Young Guard, 1990. - 332 p. - ISBN 5-235-00997-5.
Markusha A. M. Collected works. In 3 volumes. T. 3: Migratory birds. Planes of our destiny. I'll die a lieutenant. Last parade. By screws! Testament of a sad clown .. - M ., 2002. - 607 p. - ISBN 5-901808-04-5.
Romanov D.I. . - 2005. Electronic resource.
. Electronic resource.
Ivitsky I. . Electronic resource.
Katorin Yu. F., Volkovsky N. L. and others. Unique and paradoxical military equipment. - St. Petersburg. : Polygon, 2003. - 686 p. - ISBN 5-89173-238-6.
Jacques Mortane Je sais tout. - 1915/06/15 (No 115) Editeur: P. Lafitte (Paris).

Notes

An excerpt characterizing Garros, Roland

His illness followed its own physical order, but what Natasha called it happened to him, happened to him two days before Princess Mary's arrival. It was that last moral struggle between life and death in which death triumphed. It was an unexpected realization that he still cherished life, which seemed to him in love for Natasha, and the last, subdued fit of horror before the unknown.
It was in the evening. He was, as usual after dinner, in a slight feverish state, and his thoughts were extremely clear. Sonya was sitting at the table. He dozed off. Suddenly a feeling of happiness swept over him.
“Ah, she came in!” he thought.
Indeed, Natasha, who had just entered with inaudible steps, was sitting in Sonya's place.
Ever since she'd followed him, he'd always had that physical sensation of her closeness. She was sitting on an armchair, sideways to him, blocking the light of the candle from him, and knitting a stocking. (She had learned to knit stockings ever since Prince Andrei had told her that no one knows how to look after the sick as well as old nannies who knit stockings, and that there is something soothing in knitting a stocking.) Her thin fingers quickly fingered from time to time spokes colliding, and the thoughtful profile of her lowered face was clearly visible to him. She made a move - the ball rolled from her knees. She shuddered, looked back at him, and shielding the candle with her hand, with a careful, flexible and precise movement, bent over, picked up the ball and sat down in her former position.
He looked at her without moving, and saw that after her movement she needed to take a deep breath, but she did not dare to do this and carefully caught her breath.
In the Trinity Lavra they talked about the past, and he told her that if he were alive, he would thank God forever for his wound, which brought him back to her; but since then they have never talked about the future.
“Could it or couldn’t it be? he thought now, looking at her and listening to the light steely sound of the spokes. “Is it really only then that fate brought me so strangely together with her in order for me to die? .. Was it possible that the truth of life was revealed to me only so that I would live in a lie?” I love her more than anything in the world. But what should I do if I love her? he said, and he suddenly groaned involuntarily, out of a habit he had acquired during his suffering.
Hearing this sound, Natasha put down her stocking, leaned closer to him, and suddenly, noticing his luminous eyes, went up to him with a light step and bent down.
- You are not asleep?
- No, I have been looking at you for a long time; I felt when you entered. Nobody like you, but gives me that soft silence... that light. I just want to cry with joy.
Natasha moved closer to him. Her face shone with ecstatic joy.
“Natasha, I love you too much. More than anything else.
- And I? She turned away for a moment. - Why too much? - she said.
- Why too much? .. Well, what do you think, how do you feel to your heart, to your heart's content, will I be alive? What do you think?
- I'm sure, I'm sure! - Natasha almost screamed, passionately taking him by both hands.
He paused.
- How nice! And taking her hand, he kissed it.
Natasha was happy and excited; and at once she remembered that this was impossible, that he needed calmness.
"But you didn't sleep," she said, suppressing her joy. “Try to sleep…please.”
He released her, shaking her hand, she went to the candle and again sat down in her previous position. Twice she looked back at him, his eyes shining towards her. She gave herself a lesson on the stocking and told herself that until then she would not look back until she finished it.
Indeed, soon after that he closed his eyes and fell asleep. He didn't sleep long and suddenly woke up in a cold sweat.
Falling asleep, he thought about the same thing that he thought about from time to time - about life and death. And more about death. He felt closer to her.
"Love? What is love? he thought. “Love interferes with death. Love is life. Everything, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists only because I love. Everything is connected by her. Love is God, and to die means for me, a particle of love, to return to the common and eternal source". These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But these were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, something that was one-sidedly personal, mental - there was no evidence. And there was the same anxiety and uncertainty. He fell asleep.
He saw in a dream that he was lying in the same room in which he actually lay, but that he was not injured, but healthy. Many different persons, insignificant, indifferent, appear before Prince Andrei. He talks to them, argues about something unnecessary. They are going to go somewhere. Prince Andrei vaguely recalls that all this is insignificant and that he has others, major concerns, but continues to speak, surprising them, some empty, witty words. Little by little, imperceptibly, all these faces begin to disappear, and everything is replaced by one question about the closed door. He gets up and goes to the door to slide the bolt and lock it. Everything depends on whether or not he has time to lock it up. He walks, in a hurry, his legs do not move, and he knows that he will not have time to lock the door, but all the same, he painfully strains all his strength. And a tormenting fear seizes him. And this fear is the fear of death: it stands behind the door. But at the same time as he helplessly awkwardly crawls to the door, this is something terrible, on the other hand, already, pressing, breaking into it. Something not human - death - is breaking at the door, and we must keep it. He grabs the door, exerting his last efforts - it is no longer possible to lock it - at least to keep it; but his strength is weak, clumsy, and, pressed by the terrible, the door opens and closes again.
Once again, it pressed from there. The last, supernatural efforts are in vain, and both halves opened silently. It has entered, and it is death. And Prince Andrew died.
But at the same moment he died, Prince Andrei remembered that he was sleeping, and at the same moment he died, he, having made an effort on himself, woke up.
“Yes, it was death. I died - I woke up. Yes, death is an awakening! - suddenly brightened in his soul, and the veil that had hidden the unknown until now was lifted before his spiritual gaze. He felt, as it were, the release of the previously bound strength in him and that strange lightness that had not left him since then.
When he woke up in a cold sweat, stirred on the sofa, Natasha went up to him and asked what was wrong with him. He did not answer her and, not understanding her, looked at her with a strange look.
This was what happened to him two days before Princess Mary's arrival. From that very day, as the doctor said, the debilitating fever took on a bad character, but Natasha was not interested in what the doctor said: she saw these terrible, more undoubted, moral signs for her.
From that day on, for Prince Andrei, along with the awakening from sleep, the awakening from life began. And in relation to the duration of life, it did not seem to him more slowly than awakening from sleep in relation to the duration of a dream.

There was nothing terrible and sharp in this relatively slow awakening.
His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. And Princess Marya and Natasha, who did not leave him, felt it. They did not cry, did not shudder, and lately, feeling it themselves, they no longer followed him (he was no longer there, he left them), but for the closest memory of him - for his body. The feelings of both were so strong that they were not affected by the outer, terrible side of death, and they did not find it necessary to exasperate their grief. They did not cry either with him or without him, but they never talked about him among themselves. They felt that they could not put into words what they understood.
They both saw him sinking deeper and deeper, slowly and calmly, away from them somewhere, and both knew that this was how it should be and that it was good.
He was confessed, communed; everyone came to say goodbye to him. When they brought him his son, he put his lips to him and turned away, not because he was hard or sorry (Princess Marya and Natasha understood this), but only because he believed that this was all that was required of him; but when they told him to bless him, he did what was required and looked around, as if asking if there was anything else to be done.
When the last shudders of the body left by the spirit took place, Princess Marya and Natasha were there.
- Is it over?! - said Princess Marya, after his body had been motionless for several minutes, growing cold, lying in front of them. Natasha came up, looked into the dead eyes and hurried to close them. She closed them and did not kiss them, but kissed what was the closest memory of him.
“Where did he go? Where is he now?..”

When the dressed, washed body lay in a coffin on the table, everyone came up to him to say goodbye, and everyone wept.
Nikolushka wept from the pained bewilderment that tore at his heart. The Countess and Sonya wept with pity for Natasha and that he was no more. The old count wept that soon, he felt, he was about to take the same terrible step.
Natasha and Princess Mary were weeping now too, but they were not weeping from their own personal grief; they wept from the reverent tenderness that seized their souls before the consciousness of the simple and solemn mystery of death that took place before them.

The totality of the causes of phenomena is inaccessible to the human mind. But the need to find causes is embedded in the human soul. And the human mind, not delving into the innumerability and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, each of which separately can be represented as a cause, grabs at the first, most understandable approximation and says: here is the cause. In historical events (where the subject of observation is the actions of people), the most primitive rapprochement is the will of the gods, then the will of those people who stand in the most prominent historical place - historical heroes. But one has only to delve into the essence of each historical event, that is, into the activity of the entire mass of people who participated in the event, in order to be convinced that the will of the historical hero not only does not direct the actions of the masses, but is itself constantly guided. It would seem that it is all the same to understand the meaning of a historical event one way or another. But between the man who says that the peoples of the West went to the East because Napoleon wanted it, and the man who says that it happened because it had to happen, there is the same difference that existed between people who said that the land stands firmly and the planets move around it, and those who said that they did not know what the earth was based on, but they knew that there were laws governing the movement of both her and other planets. There are no and cannot be causes of a historical event, except for the single cause of all causes. But there are laws that govern events, partly unknown, partly groping for us. The discovery of these laws is possible only when we completely renounce the search for causes in the will of one person, just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets became possible only when people renounced the representation of the affirmation of the earth.

After the battle of Borodino, the occupation of Moscow by the enemy and burning it, historians recognize the movement of the Russian army from the Ryazan to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino camp - the so-called flank march behind Krasnaya Pakhra as the most important episode of the war of 1812. Historians attribute the glory of this brilliant feat to various persons and argue about who, in fact, it belongs to. Even foreign, even French, historians recognize the genius of the Russian generals when they speak of this flank march. But why military writers, and after them all, believe that this flank march is a very thoughtful invention of some one person that saved Russia and ruined Napoleon is very difficult to understand. In the first place, it is difficult to understand what is the profoundness and genius of this movement; for in order to guess what the most best position army (when not attacked) to be where there is more food - no great mental effort is needed. And everyone, even a stupid thirteen-year-old boy, could easily guess that in 1812 the most advantageous position of the army, after retreating from Moscow, was on the Kaluga road. So, it is impossible to understand, firstly, by what conclusions historians reach the point of seeing something profound in this maneuver. Secondly, it is even more difficult to understand in what exactly historians see this maneuver as saving for the Russians and harmful for the French; for this flank march, under other, preceding, accompanying and subsequent circumstances, could be detrimental to the Russian and saving for the French army. If from the time this movement was made, the position of the Russian army began to improve, then it does not follow from this that this movement was the cause.
This flank march not only could not bring any benefits, but could ruin the Russian army, if other conditions did not coincide. What would have happened if Moscow had not burned down? If Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not been inactive? What if, on the advice of Bennigsen and Barclay, the Russian army had fought near Krasnaya Pakhra? What would happen if the French attacked the Russians when they were following Pakhra? What would have happened if later Napoleon, approaching Tarutin, attacked the Russians with at least one tenth of the energy with which he attacked in Smolensk? What would happen if the French went to St. Petersburg?.. With all these assumptions, the salvation of the flank march could turn into pernicious.
Thirdly, and most incomprehensibly, is that people who study history deliberately do not want to see that the flank march cannot be attributed to any one person, that no one ever foresaw it, that this maneuver, just like the retreat in Filiakh, in the present, was never presented to anyone in its integrity, but step by step, event after event, moment by moment, it followed from an innumerable number of the most diverse conditions, and only then presented itself in all its integrity when it was completed and became past.
At the council at Fili, the dominant thought of the Russian authorities was the self-evident retreat in a direct direction back, that is, along the Nizhny Novgorod road. Evidence of this is the fact that the majority of votes at the council were cast in this sense, and, most importantly, the well-known conversation after the council of the commander-in-chief with Lansky, who was in charge of the provisions department. Lanskoy reported to the commander-in-chief that food for the army was collected mainly along the Oka, in the Tula and Kaluga provinces, and that in the event of a retreat to Nizhny, the provisions would be separated from the army by the large river Oka, through which transportation in the first winter is impossible. This was the first sign of the need to deviate from the direct direction to the Lower, which had previously seemed the most natural. The army kept to the south, along the Ryazan road, and closer to the reserves. Subsequently, the inaction of the French, who even lost sight of the Russian army, concerns about the protection of the Tula plant and, most importantly, the benefits of approaching their reserves, forced the army to deviate even further south, to the Tula road. Having crossed in a desperate movement beyond Pakhra to the Tula road, the commanders of the Russian army thought to remain at Podolsk, and there was no thought of the Tarutino position; but countless circumstances and the reappearance of French troops, who had previously lost sight of the Russians, and the plans for the battle, and, most importantly, the abundance of provisions in Kaluga, forced our army to deviate even more to the south and move into the middle of their food routes, from the Tulskaya to the Kaluga road, to Tarutino. Just as it is impossible to answer the question when Moscow was abandoned, it is also impossible to answer when exactly and by whom it was decided to go over to Tarutin. Only when the troops had already arrived at Tarutino as a result of innumerable differential forces, only then did people begin to assure themselves that they wanted this and had long foreseen it.